"Carey Rockwell - Tom Corbett Space Cadet 08 - The Robot Rocket" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rockwell Carey)

faint whine could be heard throughout the whole ship.
"Cooling pumps in operation!" Astro announced over the intercom.
"Your orbit and course set, Thistle?" asked Tom.
"Yeah, it's set!" growled Roger in reply.
Tom grinned. "Feed reactant!" he called.
Another sound, heavier and deeper pitched, blended with the whine of the pumps.
"Reactant feeding at D-9 rate!" Astro shouted.
The huge ship began to tremble under the tremendous pressure of the pumps and
feeders. Tom's eyes were glued to the astral chronometer.
"Stand by to raise ship!" he called. "Blast off minus five, four, three, two, one-zero!"
He slammed home the main circuit switch. The ship trembled violently for a few seconds
and then slowly rose from the face of the earth. It began picking up speed, accelerating at
better than seven miles per minute, hurtling spaceward into the new frontiers of mankind, the
ever-expanding universe!


CHAPTER 3

"Asteroid belt dead ahead!"
Tom Corbett's voice rang over the spaceship's intercom. "Cut power to one-quarter
thrust!" he ordered as he slammed the master control lever home. Then, putting the giant
ship on automatic pilot, he picked up the intercom again. "Corbett to Captain Strong!" he
called. "We've arrived, sir. Any special orders?"
"What's your position?" Strong asked.
"Quadrant seven, chart B, sector seventeen," said the young cadet.
"Assemble the crew on the double," ordered Strong. "I'll be right up."
After summoning his unit mates, Tom paused and stared out of the viewport into the
weird-looking spacescape of small, medium, and giant-sized pieces of space junk that
made up the asteroid belt.
The asteroid belt lay between Mars and Jupiter and could have been, as many believed,
another planet that had been broken into billions of smaller planetoids by the terrible power
of nearby Jupiter's gravity. The belt, circling endlessly around the sun, was a constant
danger to spaceships in transit between Europa and Ganymede, satellites of Jupiter, and
also was the birthplace of the meteors that showered on Earth, Mars, and Luna.
Captain Strong and the three cadets arrived on the control deck simultaneously. Strong
wasted no time with preliminaries. He faced them and pointed to the asteroid belt clearly
seen through the viewport. "There's a maverick planetoid acting up in this sector. Something
has happened to its atomic structure and the planetoid has changed its nature from a
positive-or attracting magnetism-to a negative or repelling magnetism. It's been drifting in an
irregular orbit for about two weeks now, bumping into other asteroids, which in turn are
wandering into the space lanes and endangering space traffic. Our job is to find the
maverick and blast it out of existence."
Strong walked to the electronic astrogation chart blinking on the afterbulkhead. "Reports
from three space freighters have placed the maverick in this general area here," he
continued, pointing it out on the chart. "So Thistle and Roger will take jet boat number one,
and Tom and Astro number two, and begin a wide search sweep. I'll stay on board the
Polaris and plot your reports. Any questions?"
"Yes, sir," said Tom. "Is the maverick planetoid very large?"
"About a thousand yards in diameter," replied Strong.
"How will we get rid of it?" asked Astro.